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When are readership counts as useful as citation counts? Scopus versus Mendeley for LIS journals

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  • Nabeil Maflahi
  • Mike Thelwall

Abstract

type="main"> In theory, articles can attract readers on the social reference sharing site Mendeley before they can attract citations, so Mendeley altmetrics could provide early indications of article impact. This article investigates the influence of time on the number of Mendeley readers of an article through a theoretical discussion and an investigation into the relationship between counts of readers of, and citations to, 4 general library and information science (LIS) journals. For this discipline, it takes about 7 years for articles to attract as many Scopus citations as Mendeley readers, and after this the Spearman correlation between readers and citers is stable at about 0.6 for all years. This suggests that Mendeley readership counts may be useful impact indicators for both newer and older articles. The lack of dates for individual Mendeley article readers and an unknown bias toward more recent articles mean that readership data should be normalized individually by year, however, before making any comparisons between articles published in different years.

Suggested Citation

  • Nabeil Maflahi & Mike Thelwall, 2016. "When are readership counts as useful as citation counts? Scopus versus Mendeley for LIS journals," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 67(1), pages 191-199, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jinfst:v:67:y:2016:i:1:p:191-199
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1002/asi.23369
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    Cited by:

    1. Hanna Obracht-Prondzyńska & Ewa Duda & Helena Anacka & Jolanta Kowal, 2022. "Greencoin as an AI-Based Solution Shaping Climate Awareness," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(18), pages 1-25, September.
    2. Maryam Moshtagh & Tahereh Jowkar & Maryam Yaghtin & Hajar Sotudeh, 2023. "The moderating effect of altmetrics on the correlations between single and multi-faceted university ranking systems: the case of THE and QS vs. Nature Index and Leiden," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(1), pages 761-781, January.
    3. Abderahman Rejeb & John G. Keogh & Wayne Martindale & Damion Dooley & Edward Smart & Steven Simske & Samuel Fosso Wamba & John G. Breslin & Kosala Yapa Bandara & Subhasis Thakur & Kelly Liu & Bridgett, 2022. "Charting Past, Present, and Future Research in the Semantic Web and Interoperability," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 14(6), pages 1-32, May.
    4. Kaltrina Nuredini, 2021. "Investigating Altmetric Information For The Top 1000 Journals From Handelsblatt Ranking In Economic And Business Studies," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(5), pages 1315-1343, December.
    5. Paul Kudlow & Matthew Cockerill & Danielle Toccalino & Devin Bissky Dziadyk & Alan Rutledge & Aviv Shachak & Roger S. McIntyre & Arun Ravindran & Gunther Eysenbach, 2017. "Online distribution channel increases article usage on Mendeley: a randomized controlled trial," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 112(3), pages 1537-1556, September.
    6. Metwaly Ali Mohamed Eldakar, 2019. "Who reads international Egyptian academic articles? An altmetrics analysis of Mendeley readership categories," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 121(1), pages 105-135, October.
    7. Mike Thelwall, 2017. "Are Mendeley reader counts useful impact indicators in all fields?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 113(3), pages 1721-1731, December.
    8. Timo Breuer & Philipp Schaer & Dirk Tunger, 2022. "Relevance assessments, bibliometrics, and altmetrics: a quantitative study on PubMed and arXiv," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(5), pages 2455-2478, May.
    9. Zhiqi Wang & Wolfgang Glänzel & Yue Chen, 2020. "The impact of preprints in Library and Information Science: an analysis of citations, usage and social attention indicators," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(2), pages 1403-1423, November.
    10. Mike Thelwall, 2018. "Differences between journals and years in the proportions of students, researchers and faculty registering Mendeley articles," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 115(2), pages 717-729, May.
    11. Drahomira Herrmannova & Robert M. Patton & Petr Knoth & Christopher G. Stahl, 2018. "Do citations and readership identify seminal publications?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 115(1), pages 239-262, April.
    12. Pooladian, Aida & Borrego, Ángel, 2016. "A longitudinal study of the bookmarking of library and information science literature in Mendeley," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(4), pages 1135-1142.
    13. Latefa Ali Dardas & Malik Sallam & Amanda Woodward & Nadia Sweis & Narjes Sweis & Faleh A. Sawair, 2023. "Evaluating Research Impact Based on Semantic Scholar Highly Influential Citations, Total Citations, and Altmetric Attention Scores: The Quest for Refined Measures Remains Illusive," Publications, MDPI, vol. 11(1), pages 1-16, January.
    14. Abderahman Rejeb & Karim Rejeb & Steve Simske & Horst Treiblmaier, 2021. "Blockchain Technologies in Logistics and Supply Chain Management: A Bibliometric Review," Logistics, MDPI, vol. 5(4), pages 1-28, October.
    15. Ying Guo & Xiantao Xiao, 2022. "Author-level altmetrics for the evaluation of Chinese scholars," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(2), pages 973-990, February.
    16. Ortega, José Luis, 2018. "The life cycle of altmetric impact: A longitudinal study of six metrics from PlumX," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 579-589.
    17. Muhammad Omar & Arif Mehmood & Gyu Sang Choi & Han Woo Park, 2017. "Global mapping of artificial intelligence in Google and Google Scholar," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 113(3), pages 1269-1305, December.
    18. Kuku Joseph Aduku & Mike Thelwall & Kayvan Kousha, 2017. "Do Mendeley reader counts reflect the scholarly impact of conference papers? An investigation of computer science and engineering," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 112(1), pages 573-581, July.
    19. Ortega, José Luis, 2020. "Proposal of composed altmetric indicators based on prevalence and impact dimensions," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(4).

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